2 sites using 1 CMS... issues?
-
Hi,
We are working with a client that has 2 sites in the same sector. They are currently on separate servers, with separate blogs, images galleries etc.
Both sites rank combined for over 200 terms.
IF we were to "combine" the sites on one CMS, with one IP, two separate front ends, one blog stream, one image gallery what do you think the SEO impact would be from this?
We had an issue with another client whose sites were too close and we had to separate in order to get them both to rank.
Further to this we want both sites to now have their own https certificate however this wouldn't be possible if combined.
Interested to hear thoughts on this. Thanks
-
I know lots of people who have two domains in same sector on the same server. If there content is unique and very different and they are not heavily interlinked then I would be comfortable with that.
-
Correct, I have thought the same as you. However it has been a case of business logistics that this request was put in.
Say we say, ok we will put both sites on separate CMS, blog etc ... what about having these two sites, separate URLs on the same server? They are both in the same sector?
-
When I read your question I was on the assumption that they were on separate servers and that you were going to merge them into a SINGLE DOMAIN.
Now I am thinking that you are going to run both of them from a single CMS install. That just sounds strange to me. I wouldn't do it.
-
One more point on this, would it be better for the sites to be on separate servers? Or would it impact if they were on the same server?
-
Thanks for that. Just to expand on this slightly. The idea is that both the front end sites remain. But their assets are still managed from one CMS. So the only merging would be on the server and assets, both ideally want to keep their own brand and rank for their own terms.
One site ranks very well, the other is still strong - but not as strong.
There is a lot of content overlap .. the difference is one is slightly more high end but target a lot of the same keywords.
Further to this I'm conscious about streamlining the blog, as then there is only one blog content stream for essentially 2 sites.
-
Great answer.
Couldn't have put it any better myself!
-
Merging two sites in the same sector or launching a second site in the same sector should always be given careful consideration.
My thoughts on this are.....
-
If you own the dominant site in a sector then you are in excellent position to launch a second site in that sector.
-
If you don't own the dominant site in a sector then you are better off putting all of your work into your best site (or your only site) to build it into the dominant site.
To me, those two situations are very clear.
About merging sites....
To me, if Site A and Site B have very little content overlap then a merger makes good sense. The strength of the sites will be merged and the rankings might go up for lots of keywords.
However, if Site A and Site B have a LOT of content overlap then merging them requires more careful thought. If one site is strong and the other puny, then the merger of the puny site into the strong site will not accomplish much. I would rather put work into the strong site. If both sites are moderate in strength then the merger will likely give a nice boost to the site that remains.
Before doing any merger I would be sure that both sites are clean of any Panda, Penguin or other problems. Because you don't want to merge poison into a good site.
-
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Selling same products under separate brands and can't consolidate sites...duplicate content issues?
I have a client selling home goods online and in-store under two different brand names in separate regions of the country. Currently, the websites are completely identical aside from branding. It is unlikely that they would have the capacity to write unique titles and page content for each website (~25,000 pages each), and the business would never consolidate the sites. Would it make sense to use canonical tags pointing to the higher-performing website on category and product pages? This way we could continue to capture branded search to the lesser brand while consolidating authority on the better performing website. What would you do?
Technical SEO | | jluke.fusion0 -
Using a 302 redirect for language variants. How should I use the canonical?
Hi there, I have a question regarding the canonical tag. The current setup is like so... www.site.com 302 redirects to.. www.site.com/de/ I want to add canonical tags on every page to avoid duplicate content but I'm not sure about the homepage. Should the canonical URL be www.site.com or www.site.com/de/ ? I'm concerned that I could be about to hurt my ranking. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | zuriwolf
Mitch0 -
SSL redirect issue
Hi guys, I have a site that has some internal pages with SSL. Recently i noticed that if i put https://mydomain.com, this URL is accessible but all the design is messed up. My site is on wordpress and i use "redirection" plugin for all the 301 redirect. So i decided to add a new 301 redirect from https://mydomain.com to my actual URL version of home page http://mydomain.com. After doing that, my home page doesn't load at all. Does anybody know what happens? Thank you for advice!
Technical SEO | | odmsoft0 -
Use 302 redirect when site crashes
My company has switched to a new ecommerce platform that we are not totally familiar with yet. As we've worked with it, we've had a couple situations where both the front and back ends of our site crashed simultaneously (always after installing a third party module). The platform's built-in backup solution hasn't been an option in those situations so we've been coming up with alternatives. We now have a duplicate of the site on our server for such emergencies. The plan is to have pages on the broken site point to the backup site using 302 redirects until the broken site is fixed. Is this correct usage of the 302 redirect? I often see people recommend to never use 302 redirects, but I thought this might be the kind of situation where they'd be appropriate. If so, are there other SEO considerations we should keep in mind? For example, I'm wondering if we should put canonical tags on the temporary site that point to the broken site so the broken site stays in the SE indexes.
Technical SEO | | Kyle_M1 -
Crawl issues
Hello there, I have found that when crawling my site I have errors regarding the meta description and it says it is missing from few pages. I checked these pages but there is a meta description. I also ran the same report with other tools and it comes up the same issues. What should I do?
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
2 sites versus a subdomain: Which is better?
I have a client that sponsors a couple of events during the year. They currently have pages within a single website for these events but are interested in creating a separate website so they can brand the events differently. I'm not sure this is the most effective way to do it for fear of losing the "google juice" already there for these pages.Here's what I'm thinking is a better strategy: 1) Host the content both on the main domain and the sub-domain2) Make sure there is a tag on each page of the sub-domain version that points to the main version.That will give them the branding they are seeking while pushing all juice across to the main domain.What are your thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Britewave0 -
Site Migration Questions
Hello everyone, We are in the process of going from a .net to a .com and we have also done a complete site redesign as well as refreshed all of our content. I know it is generally ideal to not do all of this at once but I have no control over that part. I have a few questions and would like any input on avoiding losing rankings and traffic. One of my first concerns is that we have done away with some of our higher ranking pages and combined them into one parallax scrolling page. Basically, instead of having a product page for each product they are now all on one page. This of course has made some difficulty because search terms we were using for the individual pages no longer apply. My next concern is that we are adding keywords to the ends of our urls in attempt to raise rankings. So an example: website.com/product/product-name/keywords-for-product if a customer deletes keywords-for-product they end up being re-directed back to the page again. Since the keywords cannot be removed is a redirect the best way to handle this? Would a canonical tag be better? I'm trying to avoid duplicate content since my request to remove the keywords in urls was denied. Also when a customer deletes everything but website.com/product/ it goes to the home page and the url turns to website.com/product/#. Will those pages with # at the end be indexed separately or does google ignore that? Lastly, how can I determine what kind of loss in traffic we are looking at upon launch? I know some is to be expected but I want to avoid it as much as I can so any advice for this migration would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Sika220 -
Site Architecture Trade Off
Hi All I'm looking for some feedback regarding a site architecture issue I'm having with a client. They are about to enter a re-design and as such we're restructuring the site URLs and amending/ adding pages. At the moment they have ranked well off the back of original PPC landing pages that were added onto the site, such as www.company.com/service1, www.company.com/service2, etc The developer, from a developer point of view wished to create a logical site architecture with multiple levels of directories etc. I've suggested this probably isn't the best way to go, especially as the site isn't that large (200-300 pages) and that the key pages we're looking to rank should be as high up the architecture as we can make them, and that this amendment could hurt their current high rankings. It looks like the trade off may be that the client is willing to let some pages be restructured so for example, www.company.com/category/sub-category/service would be www.company.com/service. However, although from a page basis this might be a solution, is there a drawback to having this in place for only a few pages rather than sitewide? I'm just wondering if these pages might stick out like a sore thumb to Google.
Technical SEO | | PerchDigital1